Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece | Page 4

were, which are, and which
are to be, present a theatre on which the soul breathes freely and feels
herself alone. Around her on all sides is God, and Nature, who is here
the face of God and not the slave of man. The spirit of the world hath
here not yet grown old. She is as young as on the first day; and the Alps
are a symbol of the self-creating, self-sufficing, self-enjoying universe
which lives for its own ends. For why do the slopes gleam with flowers,
and the hillsides deck themselves with grass, and the inaccessible
ledges of black rock bear their tufts of crimson primroses and flaunting
tiger-lilies? Why, morning after morning, does the red dawn flush the
pinnacles of Monte Rosa above cloud and mist unheeded? Why does
the torrent shout, the avalanche reply in thunder to the music of the sun,
the trees and rocks and meadows cry their 'Holy, Holy, Holy'? Surely
not for us. We are an accident here, and even the few men whose eyes
are fixed habitually upon these things are dead to them--the peasants do
not even know the names of their own flowers, and sigh with envy
when you tell them of the plains of Lincolnshire or Russian steppes.
But indeed there is something awful in the Alpine elevation above
human things. We do not love Switzerland merely because we associate
its thought with recollections of holidays and joyfulness. Some of the
most solemn moments of life are spent high up above among the
mountains, on the barren tops of rocky passes, where the soul has
seemed to hear in solitude a low controlling voice. It is almost
necessary for the development of our deepest affections that some sad
and sombre moments should be interchanged with hours of merriment
and elasticity. It is this variety in the woof of daily life which endears
our home to us; and perhaps none have fully loved the Alps who have
not spent some days of meditation, or it may be of sorrow, among their
solitudes. Splendid scenery, like music, has the power to make 'of grief
itself a fiery chariot for mounting above the sources of grief,' to
ennoble and refine our passions, and to teach us that our lives are
merely moments in the years of the eternal Being. There are many,
perhaps, who, within sight of some great scene among the Alps, upon
the height of the Stelvio or the slopes of Mürren, or at night in the

valley of Courmayeur, have felt themselves raised above cares and
doubts and miseries by the mere recognition of unchangeable
magnificence; have found a deep peace in the sense of their own
nothingness. It is not granted to us everyday to stand upon these
pinnacles of rest and faith above the world. But having once stood there,
how can we forget the station? How can we fail, amid the tumult of our
common cares, to feel at times the hush of that far-off tranquillity?
When our life is most commonplace, when we are ill or weary in city
streets, we can remember the clouds upon the mountains we have seen,
the sound of innumerable waterfalls, and the scent of countless flowers.
A photograph of Bisson's or of Braun's, the name of some well-known
valley, the picture of some Alpine plant, rouses the sacred hunger in
our souls, and stirs again the faith in beauty and in rest beyond
ourselves which no man can take from us. We owe a deep debt of
gratitude to everything which enables us to rise above depressing and
enslaving circumstances, which brings us nearer in some way or other
to what is eternal in the universe, and which makes us know that,
whether we live or die, suffer or enjoy, life and gladness are still strong
in the world. On this account, the proper attitude of the soul among the
Alps is one of silence. It is almost impossible without a kind of impiety
to frame in words the feelings they inspire. Yet there are some sayings,
hallowed by long usage, which throng the mind through a whole
summer's day, and seem in harmony with its emotions--some portions
of the Psalms or lines of greatest poets, inarticulate hymns of
Beethoven and Mendelssohn, waifs and strays not always apposite, but
linked by strong and subtle chains of feeling with the grandeur of the
mountains. This reverential feeling for the Alps is connected with the
Pantheistic form of our religious sentiments to which I have before
alluded. It is a trite remark, that even devout men of the present
generation prefer temples not made with hands to churches, and
worship God in the fields more contentedly than in their pews. What
Mr. Ruskin calls 'the instinctive sense of the divine